Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

  Hannie put her head out of the door and said, ‘Cardinal Riordan. We may have a long wait in here. Could you organize some chairs.’

  ‘Mrs Richards—’ he said imploringly, but she said, ‘Please, Cardinal.’

  ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘I’ll ask for chairs. But I must go and discuss this development.’

  Bob said, ‘Bleeding not nice? The Cardinal is unhappy?’

  Hannie, looking down at the small figure, said firmly, ‘I’m happy, and you’re happy—that’s what matters.’

  Bob looked up at her and said, ‘This place is strange.’

  Hannie looked down at her and said, ‘Perhaps you’d better change it.’

  Bob said, ‘Maybe.’

  A nervous Swiss guard knocked on the door and handed Hannie two small, carved chairs. They sat down. A nun came in and was startled to find them sitting there. She used the lavatory and left quickly. Bob said, reflectively, ‘There is much I do not understand. I have much work to do.’ There was a knock on the door.

  Cardinal Riordan whispered, ‘Could you come out a moment, Mrs Richards?’

  Hannie went out. He said, ‘I have spoken in person to the Holy Father. He still wishes to see the child. Will you be long?’

  ‘I’m waiting for Angelica’ said Hannie. ‘She has things to get.’

  ‘Oh—I see,’ said Cardinal Riordan.

  Hannie felt annoyed and said, ‘You’ve had women saints. Jesus was born of a woman. I don’t think this should upset you—you look as if you’d lost a shilling and found sixpence. What’s wrong with women anyway? Half the world is women. Your position is—you want a Saviour, but only if he’s a man, not a nasty, bleeding woman. You make me sick.’ She went back inside the Ladies, thought of something else to say, put her head round the door and said it. ‘Who told you God was a man anyway?’

  Voices outside the door indicated that Angelica had returned. She came in saying, ‘I had to send a man on a motor bike,’ and put a package of sanitary towels on the edge of the washbasin. She added, ‘The Cardinal’s worried. He says you’re behaving in a disruptive way.’

  When they were ready to leave, Hannie bent and kissed Bob on the cheek. She said, ‘I have to go now, Bob. I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other for a long time.’

  ‘I know,’ said the girl. ‘Thank you, Hannie.’

  ‘Oh no … Thank you, Bob,’ said Hannie. As they walked through the chapel, she said quietly to the Cardinal, ‘You know that if I hear anything’s gone wrong with that child, I can blow the gaff.’

  The Cardinal said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d better make sure nothing goes wrong then, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Mrs Richards,’ he told her. ‘We know you helped save Bambarake’s life, and we are grateful. But this does not give you the right to threaten us. I should advise you to go home quietly without saying any more.’

  ‘I’m going to, said Hannie. ‘But I shall be keeping an eye on you.’

  She watched them go off together, the small black girl and the tall red-clad figure. She had no doubt that in a short time Bob would be sitting opposite the Pope in a cosy room, talking and probably eating grapes. Sobered, she walked across the square, stopped by the fountain, looked at the water and began to laugh. It was a joke, she thought, to have driven all that way across the desert, to have fought with two sets of attackers, to have dragged the prize into the heart of the Vatican—and then to find that the eagerly anticipated Messiah was a teenage girl. All by herself, she watched the falling waters of the fountain and laughed and laughed. Then, catching a reflection beside her in the water, she turned. She faced the man she had seen on the beach, during the earthquake at St Colombe. Now she saw he had blue eyes, dark hair, a cheerful expression. He wore a dark jacket, a white shirt and a red tie. She gaped at him. Before she had time to speak, he smiled at her, strolled away and seemed to become part of a crowd of Japanese tourists who were clustered round a waving guide. She stared after him, into the group of tourists and around it. He was gone. Then she thought she could have seen him in Sydney, once, in the waterfront restaurant, by candlelight, at a table. Then, too, he had vanished.

  Was it the same man? Probably not, she decided as she strolled along. He had looked amused. That was because she had been laughing. He was probably a hunter-down of wealthy tourist ladies and had changed his mind when he caught sight of her travel-torn shoes and broken nails. Then she thought again of Bob, wished her well, flagged a taxi and went straight to the airport.

  OUTSIDE THE HOPE CLUB THE SALVATION ARMY BAND was playing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ when Hannie finished. ‘So there you are—believe it or not,’ she said.

  Margaret Wilkinson said, ‘It seems quite mad. How long ago did all this happen?’

  ‘About a month,’ said Hannie. ‘It’ll be kept dark, of course, either for ever or just for the time being. First they’ll do the tests, you see. Then if they’re convinced it’s true, they’ll groom poor old Bob for stardom—for example, in these image-conscious days you can’t introduce a saint or a prophet who eats with her fingers. What worries me is what they’ll do with her if she doesn’t come up to scratch. I’m afraid they might stick her in a convent to moulder. That’s why I said I’d keep on checking.’

  ‘It had to be computer astrology,’ Julie mused. ‘They can run through the whole number in the time it took twenty wizards working all their lives to do it in the old days. That’s what my mother said. “The next Saviour, he come out of Africa. It is the Bible, gal, you read it.”’

  ‘I think you half-believe all this, Julie,’ Margaret said accusingly.

  ‘It’s good news for black women everywhere, if it’s true,’ Julie told her.

  ‘The arrival of the daughter of God would be good for everybody,’ said Elizabeth.

  Margaret looked hard at both of them and said, ‘Phooey.’

  As the brass band outside played ‘Good King Wenceslas’, Hannie stood up and put on her cloak. She said, ‘My only worry at the moment is whether it means that we have to celebrate two Christ-child’s birthdays every year—Christmas and Bobmas?’

  ‘That’s a rotten thought,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Happy Christmas, girls,’ Hannie called out as she left.

  4. Christmas

  Margaret Wilkinson, sitting in her study in St John’s Wood, going through some papers, found even her formidable powers of concentration eroded by the footsteps, door-bangings and continual comings and goings of her own household. She tried again to read the statement of the private detective who, coming into the flat to find divorce evidence, found instead evidence of the murder of the lover in the case, by the husband or wife involved. The body lay, badly hacked by a teak-handled kitchen cleaver, on the bloodstained matrimonial bed, while downstairs in the dining room the husband was on the phone to his mother and, in the kitchen, the wife was making a cup of tea. What had been going on? Margaret’s client, the wife, claimed she had known nothing. Margaret found she, too, knew nothing as she heard, simultaneously, the doorbell ring and a crash of crockery from the kitchen.

  The nurse came into the room. ‘Mrs Greensleeves is here,’ she said. Lottie Greensleeves was the ex-wife of Margaret’s lover, Edward. She was now married to a banker. The two little boys, children of the marriage, were away at school and spent the holidays with their parents in rotation. Like all neat arrangements, this one broke down from time to time.

  Lottie came in wearing a large fur coat. ‘Margaret—this so sweet of you. It is dreadful. I’m frightfully grateful to you. I do hope you don’t mind my coming to see the boys.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Margaret, not getting up from the desk. ‘The nurse will show you their room.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lottie, ‘would you mind if I had a drink first? I started at six-thirty this morning. We had to drive through a blizzard to get to the airport. Scotland’s a nightmare, isn’t it?’

  Margaret, surreptitiously looking at her watch, realized it was half-past tw
elve. That was it, then—lunchtime. She stood up and said, ‘Yes, of course, and you must have some lunch.’

  In the kitchen Mrs Harris, who had just broken two cereal bowls and a plate, was not encouraging when asked about lunch. She grumbled about the nurse. ‘I’d like it,’ she said, ‘if she presented me with the boys’ breakfast plates before midday. There’s not much food I can call on at a moment’s notice—I was thinking omelettes would do you.’

  Knowing that she was being punished for Edward’s children, who had developed serious cases of chicken-pox over Christmas, Margaret said, ‘I suppose there’s some cheese?’ She left the kitchen hastily before the discussion of the cheese began and went back into the sitting room to pour Lottie Greensleeves a drink.

  For a little while it had looked as if it might be a pleasant Christmas. All had been perfect, from the polish on the glasses to the well-stocked freezer to the tastefully wrapped gifts beneath the shapely tree. The household—Robert Wilkinson, his mother, Edward Thompson, Margaret’s father and a couple of married friends—had been in good spirits. Over supper on Christmas Eve they had cracked jokes, chatted and got on like a house on fire. A peaceful family Christmas was beginning. Only Edward’s two boys, aged eight and nine, had marred the occasion with displays of irritability and ingratitude, but this was put down to pre-Christmas tension. Even their fevers and nightmares that night were attributed to undue excitement about the imminent arrival of Father Christmas. Over Christmas lunch the first spots emerged—they were, in fact, quite seriously ill and could not be moved.

  Margaret’s mother-in-law, who, although she said nothing, knew of the unusual domestic arrangements between her son, Margaret and Edward Thompson, stayed on to help with the nursing of the two boys. She was not a friendly figure at their joint mealtimes. That Robert, Margaret’s husband, was bi-sexual and had a young male lover in Bayswater was something Robert and Margaret had decided years before never to tell her. Margaret, therefore, bore most of the opprobrium for the ménage à trois but bore it philosophically. At times like this she reflected that there were two sides to every coin—here, after all, was Robert’s mother stoically changing pyjamas and carrying up nourishing soups to the patients when, if she had continued with her plans, she could have been flying off to Barbados with a friend. In the meanwhile, the nurse had arrived the day before but got on with nobody, not even her little patients. And now, Margaret reflected, here was Lottie, drinking a martini and making a social occasion of the visit to her children, whose bedsides she was plainly not desperate to rush to. One stray germ, thought Margaret, and the best organized woman’s life could be come, instantly, like a Hogarth cartoon, with the staff quarrelling in the kitchen, pots and pans crashing down everywhere, the harlot drinking gin in the parlour and the children falling out of bed upstairs. Lottie asked her what she was working on at the moment. ‘It’s murder, actually,’ Margaret told her.

  Mrs Harris came in with the omelettes. There was a terrible expression on her face as she looked at the guest. ‘The nurse is packing. Mrs Wilkinson is staying,’ she said.

  ‘Did the nurse and Mrs Wilkinson have a row?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘And a half,’ said Mrs Harris with relish.

  ‘I’ll ring the agency for another nurse after lunch,’ Margaret said and knew, for certain, that she would never get out of this place to her office at Lincoln’s Inn. The pipes would burst, the sink would block, she would get chickenpox herself and Mrs Harris would leave. She would never defend a murderer again.

  At almost precisely the same time, about one o’clock on 29 December, Julie St Just came back to her flat in Streatham, carrying a suitcase, walked into her sitting room, put the case on the floor and fell into a chair. Her younger son was watching Mary Poppins on TV.

  ‘How’s it been, Ma?’ she asked a large, beautiful black woman in her late forties who was ironing in the middle of the room.

  ‘Fine, Julie,’ said the woman. ‘You OK too? I don’t know how you get these sheets the colour they was. They grey as a donkey’s back when I come here.’

  ‘I not plannin’ to get marry in them, Ma,’ Julie replied, in her Barbados voice. ‘Jus’ sleep, that’s all. They clean, that’s all that matter.’

  ‘That remind me,’ said Mrs St Just, ‘that Raymond Genevieve come round yesterday night, lookin’ for you. I tell him you out workin’ and I try to make him realize how hard you work. I hope you don’t ever have nothin’ to do with him. He a bad boy, that one, you can see it. He tell me he got a father with a good grocery store back in Trinidad and he the only son. I think “You better off a grocer than a stickman, for that what you are.” Out loud I tell him a pity he don’t go back and help he father ‘stead of hangin’ aroun’ here doin’ nothin’. “They nothin’ for you here,” that what I tell him. I tell you Julie, they nothin’ here but trouble and more trouble. You can’t get no job or no decent place to live ‘less you practically a millionaire. The children can’t get a decent education where they learn. The teacher don’t control them, they parent don’t control them, they go wild. Here in London, I tell Raymond, no matter how you try, they catch you every way. They drive the heart and soul out of you. Here all you got is temptation. Ah, that remind me,’ she said, ‘that you John he go out yesterday and not been home since. “Where you goin’ to?” I ask him. He say to me, his own grandmother, “Min’ you business, there.” I say, “I shock at you talking to you own grandmother in this way. I responsible to Julie, I should know where you goin’ and who with,” that what I tell him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Julie. ‘What did he do then?’

  ‘I tell you what he do,’ her mother said angrily. ‘He say nothin’. He jus’ go right outside the door and he bang it when he leave. Like I say, it not you fault Julie, how he is. It the place and the time. Everythin’ against you. You frien’ Leona, she gone down to fin’ him. Now then, you want some tea or coffee? You been workin’—you tire’.’

  ‘That’s right, Ma,’ said Julie, standing up wearily. ‘I’ll get it’

  ‘No,’ said her mother, pushing her back in the chair. ‘I sorry to be talkin’ on like this when you tire’. I make the coffee.’ She went out into the small kitchen and went on speaking. ‘No—I had a good time here, and it very generous and kind to send that fare. Cynthia she feel the same and even Sally please’ though that baby she takin’ all the life from her. They gone to see Buckingham Palace jus’ now. It been a real pleasure to see you, and Thomas and John and the Tower of London and the TV and everythin’. I jus’ saying’ life here is hard for a family, and for a family with no father it worse somehow. You doin’ well, though, gal, and we all proud of you. When I saw you at the big party on TV las’ night I had tears in my eyes and runnin’ down my face.’

  ‘Good party we had on Christmas Day, though, Ma?’ said Julie. ‘I thought I’d never stop laughing when that boy came through the door with his long white beard, playing that drum, eh? Oh man, that was funny.’

  ‘Good party,’ agreed her mother. ‘But I got to say I don’t trust that Raymond Genevieve. But I suppose in you work you have to be friendly to all kind of people.’

  ‘That’s it, Ma,’ Julie agreed hastily as her mother came in with the coffee. Her mother shot her a look. Julie said, ‘What time did Leona go out?’

  ‘ ’Bout an hour ago,’ said her mother. ‘Thomas, will you turn down that TV, it deafenin’ my ear.’

  ‘I might get this new recording contract,’ said Julie. ‘If I do, I’m getting out of here, away from the action. John’s just fourteen—too young for all this.’

  This a nice flat,’ said her mother, ‘with a porter and everythin’. And I don’t know there anywhere far enough away in this town for a black boy to keep out of trouble if he want to find it. He need a father to whip him.’

  ‘Not over here,’ said Julie.

  ‘In Barbados, the father word, it law,’ said her mother firmly.

  ‘No law here,’ said Julie.

  ‘I
been thinkin’,’ said Mrs St Just.

  Julie flinched and said, ‘No, Ma. No thinkin’ please.’

  ‘You hear me now, Julie,’ her mother said. ‘I right. You want me to take John back home with me when I go. He can come and live with me and his Uncle Peter, nice and easy. We won’t be hard on him if he don’t behave like we used to. But we make sure he go to school and learn somethin’ and mix with decent friends we know.’ Julie looked at her. Mrs St Just continued, ‘It better, Julie. You know that. You got money, you can choose, not like the others. He can come back when he sixteen, seventeen year old, old enough to know what he doin’. The dangerous year he spend with me and Peter in Barbados. We love to have him.’

  ‘It hard, Ma,’ said Julie.

  ‘Life hard, Julie,’ said her mother. ‘It best for the boy. You never regret it.’

  The door opened with a crash, and Leona came in with a sulky boy, nearly six feet tall, beside her.

  ‘I won’t tell you where I find this boy or what is he doing when I find him,’ the girl cried out. She was in her twenties and very thin. ‘I won’t tell, John St Just, because I don’t want your mother and your grandmother to know because you so ‘shamed you begged me not to say. At fourteen years of age. I don’t believe it.’ She shook him. ‘You end up in prison if you go on this way. You know what that like—no light, no air, no fun, no music, just pushed around by people all day and all night. Sitting in a cell talking about Africa with your friends—you’ll never see no Africa from the inside of a home for young offenders. You got us to thank you not there already.’

  ‘ ’Raas, man,’ protested the boy. ‘Lay off me. I done practically nothin’. I just go out to see some friends. What I suppose’ to do—sit at home and watch TV all day long with Thomas? I got to go back to school next week. This is the holidays.’

  ‘Where was he?’ Julie asked Leona.

  ‘Where you think—down a club in Railton Road, smokin’ ganga with a crowd of big men and that not all,’ said her friend. ‘He didn’t look like no schoolboy, I tell you that.’